Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv is happy to announce that Yotam Halperin has signed a contract for the next three seasons. Maccabi head coach David Blatt had this reaction to the agreement: “We’re very happy. We wanted to bring him to the team last season. It was very important to bring him back, and to renew Pnini’s contract, and I’m very pleased we were able to do both of those things. The players that come to us do so because they want to, and their decisions involve making some concessions. We’re talking about one of the top players in Europe, a player that I and everyone else in the Maccabi system wanted on the team.”
Halperin (27, 1.96) played in the Maccabi Tel Aviv youth league, where he won both the state cup and the championship twice. In October of 2001, when he was only 17 years old, Halperin made his first appearance with the Maccabi Tel Aviv professional team. Four years later he was signed by Union Olimpija Ljubljana, where he also won both cup and championship. That summer, Halperin tried his luck with the N.B.A. draft, where he was chosen in the second round at number 53 by the Seattle Supersonics and was not guaranteed a contract.
Halperin returned to Maccabi for two seasons starting in 2007. In the 2007 – 2008 season he led the team to the final game of the Euroleague Final Four. He finished that season with averages of 10.2 points, 4 assists and 2 rebounds per game. In 2008 he signed with Greek powerhouse Olympiacos for two seasons. With them he reached the final game of the Final Four in 2009, and won the Greek Cup the following season, when he helped his team defeat arch-rival Panathinaikos.
Halperin finished his second season with Olympiacos with averages of 8.2 points (45.2% shooting from three-point range) and 1.9 assists in the Greek league, and 4.5 points and 1.9 rebounds in the Euroleague. To date, Halperin has won 5 Israeli championships, 2 European cups, 4 Israeli cups, one Slovenian championship, one Slovenian cup and two Greek cups.
source : maccabi.co.il
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